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Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Ready for Tour de Ski China

Yesterday I arrived to Beijing for competing in Tour de Ski China, which consists of four cross country skiing races the coming week. Today the travel continued to Xiwuqi in Inner Mongolia, where the first competition will be held as a 5 km long mass start this evening. Tomorrow it will be a sprint race in the same place. The two last races is a sprint in the Olympic Stadium the Bird Nest in Beijing on Thursday, before Tour de Ski China ends with the 50 km long Vasaloppet China in Changchun on Sunday.

Tour de Ski China is organized by Nordic Ways, the same company that have organized the Park World Tour races in China. When I was running PWT in Beijing in October I talked to the boss of Nordic Ways at the banquet and said that it could have been fun to ski the Vasaloppet in China once. He applied with inviting me for the whole Tour de Ski this year. (Probably because I have a good relationship to them after running most PWT races the ten last years and also because I have some good result from ski orienteering, with relay medals and individual top 6 results from both World and European champs.) But that is some years ago, and I am not focusing on cross country skiing this winter, so I was not sure what I should answer. Anyway I am training quite much on skies in Trondheim in the winter, and looked at competing in Tour de Ski China as a once in a lifetime opportunity. So I’m now in China together with a lot of new people, looking forward to some new challenges and great experiences.